Colten Care teams up to share the gift of hearing

COLTEN CARE HAS BECOME THE FIRST UK CARE HOME PROVIDER TO PARTNER WITH A NATIONAL ORGANISATION AIMING TO RECOVER, REPURPOSE AND REUSE NO-LONGER-NEEDED HEARING AIDS.

Our 21 homes in Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire and West Sussex have been made collection points for people to drop off hearing aids and avoid them going to landfill.

It follows a partnership agreed with newly-established campaign group Hearing Technology, Hear Today, Hear Tomorrow (HT).

Based in Oxfordshire, HT upcycles pre-loved hearing aids and donates them to people in need in the UK, the developing world and Eastern Europe.

Founder Zoe Fawcett-Eustace began to lose her hearing aged just 14.

“I am so thankful to have had access to hearing aids,” she said. “I know that my life would have been drastically different without them but at the same time I was disheartened to be told to keep my older aids for spares or to throw them away. With hundreds of millions of deaf people around the world without access to hearing technology that just seemed completely unacceptable. I knew I had to try and do something.

“We’re so grateful for Colten Care’s support. We have been working to establish a network of collection centres. There’s no doubt that there are many, many UK hearing aids going to waste each year. We need as many collection centres as possible to make it easy for people to donate theirs or their loved ones’ hearing aids.

“Colten Care are our first partnership with care homes. For them to have embraced the initiative and to have included all 21 of their homes is truly fantastic for us. We are so incredibly grateful and humbled by how many lives we hope to improve through access to better hearing care.”

To complement the growth of collection centres, HT is building links with product and parts manufacturers and retailers so that the devices dropped off can then be refurbished and redistributed.

Elaine Farrer, Colten Cares Chief Operating Officer, said: “We share HT’s sustainable ambitions to recycle and repurpose hearing aids and send them to where they are most needed in the UK and around the world.

“We know from our own experience in the care sector that many old hearing aids are simply junked which is bad for the environment and a waste of resource.

“That’s why we are partnering with HT and offering all 21 of our homes across the south as drop-off points where people can come to and hand in hearing aids.”

Colten Care is rolling out the initiative having trialled a collection point at its Abbey View home in Sherborne, Dorset.